Supporting Information

a. Overall

Allocation carry-over from one water year to the next does not occur in the South East Queensland (SEQ) region. All unused allocation at the end of a water year is forfeited.

Where a water supply scheme (WSS) has a water year that does not match the 2010–11 year of 1 July – 30 June, there is potential for claims to be remaining at 30 June as the water year has not ended.

In the Central Lockyer WSS, the water year matches the 2010–11 year, so there are no groundwater allocation claims remaining at 30 June 2010 or 30 June 2011, and the volume has been reported as zero.

b. Benefitted Area definition

In the Lockyer Valley Groundwater Management Area (GMA), within the Central Lockyer Water Supply Scheme (WSS) there is an area known as Benefitted Area for which groundwater licences are available. Benefited Areas are the equivalent of a regulated surface water resource. The Benefitted Area uses managed aquifer recharge via discharge of water from water storages to watercourses to recharge the groundwater. Of the Central Lockyer WSS's metered, licensed groundwater extractions, 1,113 ML was extracted from the Benefitted Area during the 2010–11 year. This was included as line item 18.11 Groundwater allocation extraction.

c. Central Lockyer interim groundwater entitlements

Currently, interim groundwater entitlements exist within the Central Lockyer WSS. These do not have volumetric limits, and therefore announced allocations cannot be made for individual entitlement holders. However, there is a nominal groundwater entitlement for the entire Central Lockyer WSS. Under the interim resource operation licence (IROL), the water-sharing rules provide for extraction up to the Central Lockyer WSS groundwater limit, with a provision that when individual allocations are set, groundwater allocation announcement rules should be used.

Given the intent for groundwater allocation announcement rules, for the purpose of the 2011 Account, Central Lockyer WSS has been considered to have a system with groundwater allocation announcements, extractions and forfeiture.

Although there are more Groundwater Management Areas (GMAs) within the South East Queensland (SEQ) region, only information for the Lockyer Valley GMA Benefitted Area has been included within the line items listed below:

For the purpose of the 2011 Account, other GMAs are not considered to have this entitlement system at present. As groundwater entitlements evolve in the SEQ region and the announcement, extractions and forfeiture model is implemented, other GMAs may also be included within these line items. In the 2011 Account, any extractions from other GMAs (where volumes are available) was included in line item 18.8 Non–allocated extractions to users.

d. Groundwater allocation remaining – reconciliation

The following table shows the ground water allocation reconciliation. Due to the very wet year, irrigation demand was significantly lower than in previous years resulted in a higher than usual forfeiture of groundwater allocation.